


Midnight Mumblings

by wannabewonderbender



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, college life au, waffle house au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-29
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-01 19:44:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4032337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wannabewonderbender/pseuds/wannabewonderbender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s three-thirty in the morning and the waitress with the upside-down nameplate and the drawn-on eyebrows is refilling Katara’s fifth cup of coffee. Katara would look up because the service industry is super shitty and she knows from having worked at Steak & Shake two years ago that smiles and thank you’s are priceless. </p><p>But it’s three-thirty in the morning and she has a human repo final in five hours and she still hasn’t memorized the whole hormone-release system during pregnancies yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> in which a hungover trip to waffle house inspires zutara fic. &&It’s been two years since I took human repo so please don’t hate if I made a mistake with the hormone stuff. I got all of the info from my old notes and here.
> 
> It’s 3AM and this sort of happened. I’m thinking this’ll be like a serialized thing but we’ll see where it takes us :3

It’s three-thirty in the morning and the waitress with the upside-down nameplate and the drawn-on eyebrows is refilling Katara’s fifth cup of coffee. Katara  _would_  look up because the service industry is super shitty and she knows from having worked at Steak & Shake two years ago that smiles and  _thank you’s_  are priceless. 

But it’s three-thirty in the morning and she has a human repo final in five hours and she  _still_  hasn’t memorized the whole hormone-release system during pregnancies yet. 

(it’s HCG, progesterone and oestrogen, followed by HPL—wait, no,  _ARH—_ wait,  _fuck_ , no that’s not right either. holy shit she’s so screwed. she’s going to fail the final, fail the course, never get past damn junior-level biology which means she won’t be able to take any of her senior courses next semester and she’ll never get into medical school because her GPA will be  _fucked_  and—just  _fuck_. fuck. fuck. fuck. _fuck._ )

She wants to go to sleep. She wants to give the middle finger to this final and just deal with whatever grade the bio gods give her in the morning. She wants to call her father and apologize for being such a failure. She wants to call Aang or Suki or Toph and ask them to come drag her out of this ugly yellow vinyl booth and the fluorescent lights.

But Katara doesn’t do any of that. She just grabs the steaming cup of bitter black coffee and takes a huge chug. Her tongue has long lost all sting, having been burned hot two hours ago, and even though Waffle House has a pretty shitty reputation, it really isn’t all that bad. Then again, she’s had Sokka’s “coffee” before. So, yeah, she  _knows_  what shitty coffee really is. 

With a sigh, she peers over the rim of the scratched-up porcelain mug. Katara had arrived late enough to miss the dinner crowd but early enough to snag the back corner booth from the drunk college kids (you know, those lucky fuckers that had all their finals at the beginning of the week and are able to party it up while she contemplates becoming a stripper or selling a kidney on the black market.)

She’s pretty hidden from the view. Which is good, basically what she wanted to begin with but she can see a few people. An old man that’s been there since midnight, poured over a book and a half-eaten plate of waffles pushed to the side. Then there’s a middle-aged woman who also seems to be studying (philosophy books,  _ew_ ). A few more people are scattered around but, overall, it’s quiet except for the dull seventies music in the background that’s been on a repetitive loop since she’s been in.

(that one bee gee’s song has played  _four times_  since she’s been in here.)

It’s quiet. Nice and quiet and calm. So unlike the library where she couldn’t even hear herself think, let alone focus enough on studying. She did good deciding to come here. Real good and there are no distractions—

A boy steps through the door and Katara’s hands literally freeze, cup against her lips as her eyes narrow.  _Not. Him._

It’s that kid—that  _jerk_  from her human reproduction class that had stolen her seat on the second day of class  _after_  he had thrown away her Starbucks cup because he had “thought it was empty” even though it was right by her binder and book bag and  _seriously_  she had just left for a  _minute_  and he had just _tossed it away and moved her stuff and taken her seat and just_ —-ughhhh why is he  _here_. This is  _her_ place and he definitely shouldn’t be here.

He spots her though, recognition twinkling in his eye even as she slides down in her booth a tad like the empty bench across from her would hide her face from his view. A moment later and he’s in front of her, long, pale fingers wrapped around he strap of his shoulder bag and the other stuffed in the pocket of his hoodie. 

“You’re in my human repo class,” he states, obvious and she quirks a brow. What the hell does he want? “Are you going over the notes? Look, I’m pretty much fucked for this thing, so do you mind if I join you?” 

Before she can even answer, before she can even set her cup of coffee down, he plops down in the seat and shoves his bag into the corner before he whips out a neatly kept two-inch binder and a pristine notebook.

Katara takes in a breath through her nose, places her coffee down on its’ little napkin and calmly places her hands on the table top. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Studying. Now, with you.” His voice is flat, calm, not even surprised and his eyes flicker up to hers for a scant moment before he looks back down, too busy ruffling through his binder filled with paper and labeled tabs and highlighted sections with scribbles. 

“But  _why_?” Katara presses. “How do you even know I was studying that?”

He shrugs. “You are, aren’t you?”

“Well,  _yeah_  but that’s not the point. You don’t just barge in on people you don’t even know and—”

“I know you.”

“You do  _not_  know me. You don’t even know my name.”

“Katara, with a  _K_. I sit a few seats down from you and the girl that sits beside you is Kya with a  _y_. It’s been all semester and do you know how often you say each other’s names?” He’s really looking at her now and she narrows her eyes. “You say it a lot.  _Fuck_ , you drop names like they’re going out of style.”

“You know my name, not who I  _am_.”

“How Mypsace of you.”

“Listen, I don’t want a study session, alright? I came in here to study by myself because it’s what I do. I don’t need or desire your help and would appreciate it if you found your own little space, alright? Just in case you haven’t noticed, but there are plenty of free booths open for your choosing. Buzz away, flyboy.”

“It’s HPL then ARH.”

She blinks. “What?” 

“It’s HPL then ARH,” he repeats. “Then CRH and after that, the thyroid hormones.” The boy brushes a few strands of dark hair out of his eyes before he flips to a page in his notebook and scans over it for a moment. Then he’s pushing it towards her and she looks down to see that he has the order of the hormones listed in a ladder by order and it’s so beautiful she could cry. 

Katara bites at her lower lip, looks up at him from underneath her eyelashes and sees that he isn’t smiling or smirking. He just goes back to looking through his notes until he comes upon a half-labeled diagram of the female reproductive anatomy. 

“What’s your name?” If he’s going to sit here, she might as well know  _that_.

“Zuko,” he mumbles in reply. Then, “Hey, so where is the Mesovarium? It was on her word bank but I didn’t find it on my notes—”

“There,” Katara reaches across and uses the tip of her pencil to point to where it’s located. “Just remember that it’s located on the right side of the  _M_. And the Perimetrium is  _here_ , not there.”

The boy— _Zuko_ , she reminds herself—nods. “Great.  _Fuck_ , I wish I had learned this system back when we first learned it. What the hell is it with cumulative finals anyway?”

“I think it’s like one of those comparisons. This test is basically what labor pains are in the academic world. There’s not really a point except to get at the end. It just fucking  _sucks_.”

He snorts and gives her a look. “Just how long have you been here?”

“About four and a half hours. And if you want to stay, then you best shut it with the attitude.” Katara huffs. “Got any notes about the endocrine system?”


	2. Chapter 2

It’s two-thirty in the morning and Zuko has no where to go. All of his friends are still wrapped up in finals, Azula finished and left town two days ago, and he’s so tired of playing video games that he thinks he’s finished with them for forever. 

So, he goes to Waffle House. 

(and he totally isn’t hoping that Katara is there too.)

He’s been sitting in the yellow booth for about a half-hour now, poured over a book about the Hoplite Phalanx and it’s so incredibly absorbing and  _can you believe that it’s just one giant symbol for the Greek state?_  that he jumps about a foot in the air when someone slams into the booth across from him. 

It’s Katara. And she looks …

“ _What_?” She asks, catching the look on his face and Zuko fumbles to remove the thick black frames from his eyes, setting them to the side. “I didn’t know you wore glasses. You didn’t the other night.” It’s almost accusatory, as if she’s personally offended that he didn’t tell her his vision basically  _sucks._

Zuko closes the book, shrugs. “I forgot to buy solution. It’s just my left eye, really.” He doesn’t offer much more of an explanation than that because why should he? 

Katara hums something and digs for her phone, fingers flying across the keyboard and he takes a sip of his coffee. Why did she come sit with him? Why was she here? She had told him that night they studied together that she’d be finished by Thursday. Zuko suspected that she’d be long gone for the summer vacation. 

“You look rough,” he notices, taking in the haphazard state of her hair, her black eyeliner and mascara that’s speckled across her cheeks in some places, the smudged outline of her red lipstick. Katara looks up, fixes him with a deadly glare and he just  _now_  realizes what he said. “Not that- _no_ , I didn’t mean it—it’s just that you look rough.  _Now._  And you never do so … Feel free to stop me at any time.”

The light of her phone blinks off and she snickers. “Tip one: don’t  _ever_  tell a woman she looks rough.” Katara puts her elbows on the table and swipes underneath her eyes with the pads of her fingers, flicks the speckles off like they’re dust. “Is that coffee?”

Zuko is about to tell her that  _yes_ , of course it is (it’s in a mug, isn’t it?) when she just reaches forward and takes it, moaning whenever it’s close enough for her to smell and he’s pretty sure his jaw scrapes the table whenever she takes a long, rich gulp. 

“Nothing will  _ever_  beat cheap coffee. I don’t care who you are.” Katara takes another good sip before she slides it back towards him. He just looks at it. “So, what are you reading?” 

“Did you seriously just drink my coffee?”

“It’s  _coffee_ , not the Elixir of Life.” 

Zuko scoffs. “It’s  _coffee.”_

“Oh,” she says, popping the  _o_. “I guess you’re right. Maybe they should call it the  _Elxir of Life_  from now on. It sounds more badass, don’t you think?” She leans forward and he quickly grabs his mug, holding it away from her and she gives him a look before her hand slaps on the cover of he book he was reading. “Relax. I don’t want any more of your elixir.”

“Exactly.  _My_  elixir.” Zuko frowns as he wipes away her lipstick stain from the rim of his mug. 

“ _A Storm of Spears_ —holy shit, you History majors actually read this stuff in your off time?”

“Yes?” He replies, unsure if she’s even trying to make a point with it before he huffs. “It’s honestly the most revolutionary argument about ancient western warfare that we’ve seen in a while. Matthew changed the way we view how the phalanx actually fought, y’know? It’s actually been a major controversy the past few years, but his work really has given us a definitive look at how they moved and operated and—why are you laughing?”

“Because I honestly have no clue what you’re talking about right now.” She giggles. 

He blinks. “Are you  _drunk_?”

“No,” Katara adamantly shakes her head, frizzy curls flying. “I’m just tipsy. High.  _Not_  drunk.”

Zuko narrows his eyes and she huffs. 

“Alright, maybe a little,” she holds up her hand, index finger about an inch away from her thumb as if to show just  _how_  drunk is drunk. “I Uber’d. Don’t worry.”

“You  _Uber’d_ here?”

“What, so you want me to drive myself or something?” She asks, totally confused as she just  _looks_  at him like he’s crazy. “Because that’s really not cool.”

“ **No** ,” he quickly interjects, “it’s just that it’s Uber. You’d let a stranger drive you here?”

Now Katara looks  _really_ confused. “What in the hell do you think a fucking  _taxi_  is? Look—-whatever _,_ I’ll forget you ever said anything. It’s completely wiped.” She swipes her hand in the air between them. 

Zuko picks up his glasses again and slips them on, messes with the fringe of hair that’s fallen into his eyes as he opens his book back up. “I’d really love to say that I’d like to keep chatting but I don’t like lying.” 

“Oh come on,” she rolls her eyes. He says nothing. Doesn’t even look up at her but he can see her fidget uncomfortably in the booth. “ _Zuko_.” A pause. A minute. And another. “ ** _Zuko.”_**

He finally shifts his eyes up to peer at her from over the top of his book. That’s when he realizes that he hasn’t actually  _read_  anything. He’s just sort of stared at the pages. What that means, he isn’t sure. He doesn’t even know if it means anything.

“Look, I—” her phone vibrates on the table and she snatches it up, a relieved look flashing across her face that immediately shifts to excitement and she shoots up. “C’mon, there’s this DJ that just showed up at  _Iris_  and I totally have to be there.”

Before he can even process what she’s saying or doing, Katara is tugging at his sleeve like she’s trying to yank him up. “What does this have to do with  _me_?”

“You drove right?” He nods. “I  _can’t_  drive. And you need some fun, damn it. C’mon, let’s  _go_  we need to be there, like, ten minutes ago.”

“It’s almost three in the morning!” 

“So? You’re already awake and the sun doesn’t come up for another four hours, now let’s  **go.”**

Zuko tries to tell himself that he goes because she’s drunk and he hates Uber. That the lights were starting to hurt his head and the coffee was getting cold. That he’d already read this book four times. That he doesn’t have anything better to do and he hasn’t been out for a night on the town since before midterms. 

But, really, the only reason he’s going is much more pathetic than any of those things.

He’s going because she asked. 

And holy shit. He can’t believe he’s going because she asked.


End file.
